Sunday, February 1, 2009

No DirecTV News Yet For Daytona

Thanks to all of you who have been emailing and asking if DirecTV was going to follow through on their promise to add new NASCAR video features for 2009. Since the Hot Pass service was cancelled, there has been no news from the company.

The VP of Sports for DirecTV is Chris Long and he indicated that the company was working with NASCAR to get something going for this season. Obviously, DirecTV wants to ride out this tough economic time and try to get Hot Pass back up and running for 2010.

"NASCAR and DIRECTV made the decision to evolve HOTPASS into a new product that will be available to all DIRECTV customers at no extra charge in 2009," said Long. "We are finalizing the details now and will unveil the new service in the next few weeks."

Well, that was December 10th of 2008 so hopefully DirecTV will be updating the situation over the next week. There are lots of options, but they all certainly will wind-up costing DirecTV some additional money and that is what they just do not have right now.

DirecTV recently left the IRL as a presenting sponsor and just like many media companies there is a hiring freeze in effect for the DirecTV folks in California and Colorado. Click here to see just how remote the DirecTV Colorado facility really is from Google maps.

Of course, the ultimate irony is that DirecTV is still the title sponsor of Speedweeks at Daytona and we will be hearing that company name a lot on both SPEED and ESPN right up to the big race.

TDP will update any news on this issue that comes along as soon as possible. Again, thanks for the email and please feel free to offer your DirecTV comments on this post. To see the Hot Pass truck full-size, just click on the picture.

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I fear that any deal NA$CAR makes with Direct will be another exclusive deal that will prevent other satellite, cable, network, etc. from having anything similar for many years ( like cell phones, insurance, internet content like NA$CAR.com , etc).

If you had Hotpass last year it is still on your account and you can't remove it online without calling them. Though I don't believe they will automatically start billing when the season starts, you never know. I made the call myself to get it pulled off just to be sure.

DirecTV was very proud of the NASCAR connection, as you can see from their sponsorship of many promotions within the sport.

As the economy crumbled in the final months of 2009, DirecTV was forced to drop everything that it could not be certain would make money for this year.

Hot Pass was supported by the additional fees voluntarily paid by existing DirecTV viewers for the service. There was no way to make sure in these tough times that it would break even or turn a profit.

There is absolutely no doubt that both DirecTV and NASCAR want this type of service to return. It "expanded the brand" of both companies and did a good job of getting NASCAR a lot of media exposure.

Just like we showed in the picture, Hot Pass was basically a big JHE truck that showed up, plugged into the TV compound and then uplinked into the sky.

Once we get the next press release from DirecTV, I will ask Mr. Long by email about 2010 if that information is not contained already.

I've been with DirecTv since around May 1997 ( got it because back then the Coke 600 was on TBS and our cable company didn't carry TBS). Like bevo said they always seem to be able to produce something pretty quick. Like a lot of others I'm going to miss HotPass too. At least we have FOX to start things off.

i heard it's coming back as a watered down version. 4 cars each week (4 channels), just an in-car camera view and scanner audio with that. no other camera angles, no announcers. also they will still have that channel where you can watch the network but listen to a whole group of other drivers radios. can't remember what they called it. and of course FREE which never hurts. although regardless, i will miss last year's version of hotpass and hope they eventually bring it back.

From what I heard about "Hot Pass", I wish that that service was offered on all the tv providers (i.e. cable, Dish and Direct Tv). I would have loved to see that but seeing as how I have cable and am happy with it, I will not be able to see it. I also wish that I had it when DW does his Christian specials on Direct TV.